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You and I might reach for a claw hammer, but all this mason bee needs are his own legs--his very strong legs. Watch him pull the long nail completely out of the hole.

What's happening here? The bee is probably returning home. The Daily Mail quotes zoologist Lynn Dicks:

Dr Lynn Dicks a research fellow from Cambridge University's Department of Zoology explained the bee's behaviour: 'Mason bees like this usually choose existing holes rather than excavating their own.

'I have never seen anything like this and suspect that the nail was places in a nest hole this bee had already started using. This would explain its urgency to remove the nail - it may have laid eggs or have larvae inside.'

-via Nothing to Do with Aborath

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This new treatment for Parkinson's Disease is called Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS). It begins with the surgical implantation of electrodes that send signals to specific parts of the brain. The eletrodes are regulated by a pacemaker-like device in the chest. When activated, the electrodes counteract the tremors.

In the above video by the New York Post, Dr. Paul J. Waguespack activates the system in a patient named Mr. Richardson. Once the system is turned on, Mr. Richardson's tremors stop cold within seconds.

-via Robb Allen

(Photo: Ruptly)

Alcoholic Architecture, a bar in London, wants to appeal to your sense of smell. That's why it once created a cocktail cloud that you could drink simply by breathing.

Continuing that theme, the bar recently offered a novel speed dating event called Romancing the Armpit. Participants placed paper bags on their heads, then smelled each other's armpits. They rated each other by smell and were matched up accordingly. The premise is that people are naturally attracted to good partners by smell:

We know that pheromones – the airborne compounds secreted in our sweat – play a role in sexual attraction.

Our body odour is largely influenced by Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) molecules, which are genetically determined and linked to the immune system. Experiments have shown that opposites attract; we tend to judge potential sexual partners as more attractive if their MHC composition is different from our own. Further, MHC is also linked to sexual preference, so differences in body odour are detected and responded to on the basis of an individual’s gender and sexual orientation.

Perhaps, one day, all online dating profile pictures will be scratch-n-sniff. In the meantime, you can see more photos of this speed dating event at the Daily Mail.

-via Debby Witt

Johannes Haushofer is a full-time professor at Princeton University. So by academic standards, he's tremendously successful. 

But he wants his students to understand that the journey to success is filled with failure after failure. He wants them to encounter defeat, overcome it, and keep moving forward. So he made a curriculum vitae (a type of résumé that academics use) listing all of the failures in his career that he can think of.

Haushofer explained his perspective to the Washington Post:

“Most of what I try fails, but these failures are often invisible, while the successes are visible,” Haushofer writes. “I have noticed that this sometimes gives others the impression that most things work out for me. As a result, they are more likely to attribute their own failures to themselves, rather than the fact that the world is stochastic, applications are crapshoots, and selection committees and referees have bad days.”

Do you have a long list of failures? Good. That means that you're trying:

Haushofer adds that if his CV of failures seems short, it’s probably because he’s forgetting some things. And a longer CV of failures could very well be a good thing – it might mean the person is good at trying new things.

-via Nag on the Lake

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Driving a streetcar isn't just a job. It's a way of life that perfects both the mind and body in athletic perfection.

SB Nation reports that the tram drivers of Europe sometimes play sports with their cars, including bowling. The greatest tram athletes recently gathered in Berlin at TRAM-EM, the championship competition, to find out who was the best. You can watch a video of their events here.

-via The Presurfer

(Berkely Mews)

But I mean that figuratively. You're a wizard when it comes to cleaning well. The Sorting Hat has spoken. Study hard and you could be head custodian in a couple decades. 

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This black Labrador is on his way to the park. He's in a hurry and acts like a backseat barker in response to his human's slow driving. He's just like a kid.

-via Nothing to Do with Aborath

Keith Moon was the drummer for The Who, a British rock band formed in 1964. He had serious drug addiction problems that ultimately killed him 1978.

By 1973, Moon's drug use was greatly impairing the effectiveness of The Who. At one concert in San Francisco, Moon overdosed and passed out. After punching him and giving him cold showers for half an hour while the audience waited for the concert to resume, the other band members managed to get him conscious. Then he slipped out again. Moon was out for the night.

This was a huge problem. The band had to have a drummer.

Lead singer Pete Townshend stepped up to the mic and addressed the audience:

“Can anybody play the drums? I mean someone good!”

20-year old Scot Halpin was in the audience. He could play the drums, though he hadn't in a year. But he would have to do.

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For an evening, Halpin became a member of The Who. He had a brief moment of fame as news about his feat swept around the world. You can read about Halpin's experience at Dangeorus Minds and view his performance in the above video.

-via Jonah Goldberg

(Photo: City Council of Tomares/AP)

Construction workers in Tomares, Spain were laying pipe when they found 19 amphorae (ceramic jars) containing 1,300 pounds of bronze and silver coins that date back to 4th Century A.D. The Seville Archaeological Museum says that they were probably minted in the area and then stored to pay soldiers and government officials. The Guardian quotes archaeologist Ana Navarro:

Navarro declined to give a precise estimate for the value of the haul, saying only that the coins were worth “certainly several million euros”.

The coins are stamped with the inscriptions of emperors Maximian and Constantine, and they appeared not to have been in circulation as they show little evidence of wear and tear.

It is thought they were intended to pay the army or civil servants.

“The majority were newly minted and some of them probably were bathed in silver, not just bronze,” said Navarro.

-via Atlas Obscura

ELEMNT, an art studio in New York City, makes luxury, handcrafted goods with marble and leather. Their Darth Vader helmet, which is pictured above, is covered with python skin. It's available in limited numbers, as it takes up to two weeks to make. Each one costs $3,000. It's the perfect way to make Darth Vader even creepier. 

-via Geekologie

(Image: Augsburger Allgemeine)

Do you like to type out text messages on your phone while walking? That's fine, so as long as you don't get hit by a train. Tragically, that happened to a 15-year old girl in Augsburg, Germany. She died.

So the city of Augsburg took action. It installed traffic lights at train crossings on the ground, where they would fall into the peripheral vision of texters. The Daily Mail reports on this and other efforts around the world to prevent texting accidents:

Augsburg is not the only city introducing measures to make phone users more aware of their surroundings – or at least keeping them safe as well as others around them.

In 2014, the city of Chongqing experimented with a 165ft long pavement divided into lanes – with one for speedy and alert pedestrians and another for 'smombies,' meaning smartphone zombies.

Similarly, last year, Utah Valley University's Student Life and Wellness Centre (UVU) introduced a 'walking and texting' lane to a busy flight of stairs.

The idea started as a joke, although it could ensure that diligent students get to class on time and prevent accidents caused by people not looking where they are going.

The staircase was divided into three lanes, for walking, running and texting.

-via The Contemporist

The outdoor gear company The North Face has unveiled a backpack with a radical new opening system. Instead of a zipper around the main pouch, it has a spring loaded opening that snaps open and shut. When opened, the spring pushes the outer shell away, creating a wide mouth into the pouch.

It's appropriately named the Access Pack. You can see more photos and a video at The Contemporist.

You want to keep your pot on the stove from boiling over? Place a wooden spoon over the top. This pops the bubbles as they rise to the top and before they spill over.

Would you like to shuck a strawberry without mutilating it? Shove a straw through the bottom to core it like an apple.

These are just 2 of 21 handy kitchen hacks rounded up by BuzzFeed. Check them all out, including how to peel a mango with a glass and how to get perfectly clear ice cubes.

(Photo: Library of Congress)

Why? Because Texas is awesome, that's why. And here's further evidence: go to the Evergreen Cemetery in Paris, Texas. There you will find the grave of Willet Babcock (1821-1881), a wealthy resident who built furniture, caskets, and the town's 1,200-seat opera hall.

Babcock commissioned an artist named Gustave Klein to carve this marble monument to stand over his grave. It's thought to be a representation of Jesus because of his clothing, body shape, and, of course, his cowboy boots.

You knew that Jesus wore cowboy boots, right? 

Anyway, Babcock's grave, which is popularly known as the Jesus in Cowboy Boots, is now a popular tourist attraction. You can read more about it at Atlas Obscura.

(Photo: Sam Hodgson/New York Times)

Amy E. Herman is an expert on visual perception. She teaches people how to observe things and gain information from them. This is an essential skill for police officers, so she frequently trains cops how to be better observers by taking them to art museums. Herman shows police officers paintings and asks them what they see. The New York Times describes one such class:

Ms. Herman also displayed a pair of slides featuring reclining nudes: Goya’s “The Nude Maja” (1797-1800) and Lucian Freud’s 1995 “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping,” who is very fat. Ms. Herman asked the group to compare the pictures. “Most cops, when I ask this question, say it shows someone before and after marriage,” she said.

Several officers raised their hands.

“Uh, the woman at the bottom is more generously proportioned,” one said.

“She is morbidly obese,” said another.

“Right!” Ms. Herman said. “Don’t make poor word choices. Think about every word in your communication.”

Police often look at art differently from art historians. When they're in the museum, they're taking down criminals:

“Sometimes they’ll say, ‘We have an E.D.P. here’ — an emotionally disturbed person,” Ms. Herman said. Once she showed some officers El Greco’s “The Purification of the Temple,” which depicts Jesus expelling the traders and money-changers amid turmoil and mayhem.

“One cop said, ‘I’d collar the guy in pink’” — that would be Jesus — ‘“because it’s clear that he’s causing all the trouble.’”

-via Glenn Reynolds